The stage was raised and six-sided, black, shiny, broad, two mirrored columns at opposite ends. On it, four chrome poles formed a square two meters to a side; three rings of fold-up seats surrounded it; a neon-lit bar sat to one side of it. The room was lit with pulsing lights and glowing smoke; speakers pumped harsh dance hits; an open door lead to a small stale lobby with a table, a money-box, and a pimp.
We came in and sat down, hiding behind the others. Around us were a dozen tourists; some whites, an Indian, a handful of East Asians. We were sitting next to a well-dressed man, may be French; next to him was a small group of frat types, and a rotund couple that looked fresh out of the Midwest. To our other side were two old fat white-haired men, an Indian and may be a Texan; next to them were two girls and one guy in their early tweens. Everyone stared with saucer-eyed, strained attention.
The Thai woman on the stage was nude and birthing four of five ping-pong balls into a glass cup. We’d clearly walked in on the title act. She was stiff and glassy-eyed, probably a hundred miles away. She bent down with a red cloth and cleaned up, then stepped down with her cup.
The next dancer was already waiting, clad in a black thong and top. Her face was hard and creased; she might have been 35 or 40. She stepped up and started to “dance,” shuffling her feet, swaying a little left and a little right, alternately walking the stage and limply holding a pole. After ten minutes she stopped, dropped her thong, and put her fingers to her vagina. From it she laboriously pulled two meters of linked razors, glinting to the beat. She took the lead blade in her hand and showed us a sheet of paper, which she calmly sliced to shreds.
A plump dancer took the stage, a brace around her right ankle. A thin scar snaked around her stomach. She winced as she shuffled from foot to foot, carefully, painstakingly. She eventually produced five meters of white cloth; she limped around the stage, pulling the cloth around the poles, creating a cloth arena around herself. She rhythmically yanked the cloth back and forth before gathering it up and stepping down.
We stayed perhaps two hours. The dancers got older, younger, one unexpectedly spunky, most dead to the world. Bananas launched in the air, birthday cakes and snuffed candles, mysteriously smoked cigarettes, clear water turned miraculously to brown coke.
For the finale, a man and a woman had sex. The man alternated between thrusting and moving the woman around the stage, so the whole audience could see. And my friend and I, we looked to each other.
There come times when retinas peel and emotions detach, times when we must act because sadder worlds threaten our own. To that end, we stood and left.
Michael Moore’s SiCKO
I just watched SiCKO, Michael Moore’s doc blasting the U.S. healthcare system. His message: the U.S. healthcare system puts profits in direct opposition to patients, and the profits win every time.
Now, Michael Moore documentaries all have the same basic problem: his argument is just as simplistically one-sided as the arguments of the politicians and corporate bosses he lampoons, he’s just on the other side. So his technique is inherently hypocritical: if it’s bad when Capitol Hill and FOX News does it, why’s it good when he does it? The issue is obviously more complex than “U.S. sux, Canada/Britain/France/Cuba rawks!” but Moore too busy with anecdotes and outrage to get to it.
That said, the guy’s absolutely right.
Why is U.S. healthcare so pathetic? Why are HMOs in the business of denying claims, rather than helping patients? We’re blind to the obvious because it’s just par for American life, because we don’t know any better so we think we’re the best. America spends 16% of its GDP on healthcare, proportionally and per-capita more than any other nation in the world. And yet, it’s the U.S. that ranks 37th, just ahead of Slovenia. And yet, it’s the Canadians, the British, the French, the Cubans who can walk into any public hospital and get checked-up, medicated, operated on, saved, who don’t even have the concept of being “denied” treatment, because to do so would be incurably inhumane.
Why do we have “free” K-12 education, complementary police and firefighters, but not free healthcare? If we think it’s important for everyone to be educated, secure, and safe, why don’t we think it’s important for everyone to be healthy? We’re afraid that universal healthcare will be badly mishandled, will remove “choice,” will be catastrophically numb and bureaucratic, but could anything be more mishandled, constrained, and willfully bureaucratic than our odious axis of HMOs?
SiCKO gets in our face, gets us talking about the nightmare of American healthcare, and that’s why for all its faults it’s still worth your time. Go see it: it’ll be good for you.